


Bolthole Mixtape: Song 2

by ItsSweaterWeather



Series: Bolthole Mix Tape [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adorkable, Angst, Awkwardness, Beginnings, F/M, Inspired by Music, POV Molly Hooper, POV Sherlock Holmes, Series, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Taking the long way to Post-TFP, bolthole negotiations, follows BBC episodic canon, inspired by another work, part 2 of a series, pre-tfp, simmering feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsSweaterWeather/pseuds/ItsSweaterWeather
Summary: “Em…what about tea? You take tea…and biscuits? Don’t you?”Sherlock's translucent lids fluttered over eyes gone vapor-gray in the ambient glow of the lab's under-cupboard lighting.He trained that pale gaze on her, a big cat circling his prey. His eyes pinned her in place and not at all against her will.Molly floated in the quiet, small hands frozen to the stainless steel worktop, and waited for him to pounce. He didn't. Instead, he spun the long seconds between them, weaving a spell around her.She’d linger there for hours, if necessary, just to hear his voice again.“Tea. Yes. I take tea,” he said, a corner of his mouth inching upward.The muscles in her stomach fought the pull of his unintentional seduction.Failed.He'd meant it unintentionally... right?





	Bolthole Mixtape: Song 2

**Author's Note:**

> Terms of the bolthole arrangement are drawn up. Ah...the written and unwritten rules by which they both shall abide. Good luck with that. This relationship is set to simmer. Is that low enough to keep the pot from boiling over (eventually)? 
> 
> As with song #1, I had the lyrics but not the tune until I met you. This series is held loosely in place and inspired by [ sunken_standard's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunken_standard/pseuds/sunken_standard) exquisite work [So What Was Your Last Girlfriend Like?](https://archiveofourown.org/series/719403)
> 
> And, as with song #1, this sucker is unbeta'd.

###  [You Do Something To Me - music & lyrics by Cole Porter | sung by Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV2_otzuznc)

**A surprisingly chilly Friday night, September - 2010**

Molly stood in front of her bathroom mirror lamenting the draft whistling over her bare thighs. The evening's temperature had shifted on her walk home, whipping up leaves and shaking tree limbs. Now it gusted under her windowsill. Changing into something 'cute' for tonight's _not-date_ meant forfeiting warmth and comfort. She disliked her options. Perhaps she could get away with cozy flannel pyjama bottoms and the man who noticed everything wouldn't notice.

Not likely.

Her current 'look' was noteworthy for its lack of style: an oversized fisherman’s sweater (a bit frayed around the neck and cuffs), white cotton pants (a bit plain all over), black wool knee socks (a bit...well, a bit nothing-but-practical). She'd kicked off her wide-legged denim trousers in the kitchen. Force of habit; Molly tended toward manic multi-tasking at home after long shifts of concentrated focus at Bart's.

Why just unpack the groceries when one could put them away, make tea, and undress all at once? 

All that expert juggling wouldn't stall time, however. The wall clock continued to mock her with its relentless tick-tock.  _Hurry up! Hurry up!_

She’d have to settle accounts with her wardrobe later. Not that she had many chips to cash in. Everything she owned tended toward comfortable, sometimes kooky. Mostly unassuming. 

"Seven thirty-seven," she frowned at the clock.

 _Later_  loomed large.

“Right. Hair.” She'd given up trying to do anything special with it about two minutes after she started fiddling. The time for engineering one of her 1940s-style specialties had long since passed.

“ _Someday._ Just not tonight, Hooper.”

Molly wrapped the cord around the hot roller box and shoved it under the basin. So far, her night hadn't lived up to the giddy, effortless romp she'd envisioned. Time enough though to turn that tide before he arrived.

And more than enough time, once he had arrived, to mold the evening around moonlight and wine.

_Moonlight and wine?! Who are you, Molly Hooper??_

She'd asked herself the same question, ad nauseum, since meeting Sherlock Holmes in the morgue little over a year ago. Cupid lay on her slab disguised as a decomposed male, 49, suspected poisoning (Sherlock's incorrect hypothesis). Hereditary hemochromatosis (her correct diagnosis). 

He'd blown through the morgue doors, coattails and a member of Bart's credentialing and governance department trailing behind him. Ready. Aim. Fire! The arrow found its mark a split second after she'd caught sight of his profile. The sharp nose, pronounced cheekbones, and muscular neck should've overpowered his face, made him difficult to look at straight on.

And his eyes. Mercurial things. They reminded her of the Adriatic glittering under a clear summer sky. And stern looking rain clouds threatening St. Brides Bay in winter.

She stood stock still as he crossed the room in two long strides coming to stand at the opposite side of the table. He forced that lean face of his into an unconvincing smile and proceeded to peer into the body's open cavity - without saying a single word. Not a 'hello' or a 'how do you do?' or even an 'excuse me'. When he straightened, he fixed her with pale eyes and announced that his quick search ("under three minutes") of the area surrounding Watford Riverside Recreation Ground told him all he needed to know: the victim clearly died as a result of cumulative heavy metal poisoning. 

Sherlock rocked back on his heels and cocked one heavy brow at her, waiting for a round of applause.

A wonder Molly heard a word he'd said, what with each syllable popping off those lips. They were gorgeous things sculpted by Cupid himself; a deeply cut top one, the full-to-bursting bottom one. Almost a shame to discredit his hypothesis.

And yet the prospect of making such a pretty mouth pout thrilled her.

His assessment landed in the vicinity but he'd gone wide of dead center at the last. Iron _had_ killed Mr. Murthy, but not as Sherlock had assumed. The weapon in poor Mr. Murthy's cause of death was his own body, overdosing itself on iron leeched from the foods he ate. The victim's internal organs had finally failed him, shutting down as he took a jog along the river path. So, really, he wasn't a 'victim' at all. He was just a plain old dead body.

> "Em, yes, well... no. Not exactly, Mr... Mr...I'm sorry...who are you?"
> 
> He thrust his lower lip out. His noisy exhale whooshed upward, lifting a lock of glossy hair off his forehead. He took a step around to her side of the autopsy table so near to her, she felt the chill off his wool coat.
> 
> But he wasn't close enough.
> 
> He was so very tall...
> 
> And smelled posh; clean shaving soap of the kind that came in the little cake, hazy woodsmoke, and musk - possibly his own.
> 
>  "The name's Sherlock Holmes. Miss...?"
> 
> And sounded posh, too.
> 
> "Em...Miss Hooper. Molly...em... Molly Hooper."
> 
> She sounded like a parrot. 
> 
> And smelled of formaldehyde.

It didn't make any sense, her immediate attraction to the lanky, arrogant _consulting detective_ (whatever that meant). The man strode around the morgue and lab spaces, presumably _everywhere_ he went, with hands clasped behind his back, assessing everyone and everything that crossed his sightline with cool, tacit amusement. He had an endless supply of eye rolls and egregious sighs on hand and all were deployed with the bare minimum of civility. 

But here she was, standing in her bathroom with hands on hips, ticking off style options in hopes of eliciting something beyond languid observation from Sherlock Holmes.

"Ponytail. Ponytail. Ponytail. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh." Molly snapped the elastic band on her wrist repeatedly in a last-ditch effort to conjure an inspired (and quick) 'do before admitting defeat. Why did prepping for a _not date_ present more challenges than getting ready for a _date-date?_ He didn't even seem remotely interested in her beyond the hideout potential her flat posed.

“Bolthole,” she corrected her reflection.

The word still held in it an element of Bonnie and Clyde, despite him dousing all her romantic daydreams in tepid politeness. 

> “So, as proprietress of this underworld lair, is there anything I need to supply, for your comfort? Fully loaded weaponry at the ready? Decks of marked playing cards? Should I practice my alibi in case the coppers come snooping about?” she snorted. The noise bleated around the lab before she could lasso it with a coquettish flirt.
> 
> She weighed the merits of batting lashes at him but the blasted scales tipped emphatically against her stubbly brown fringe.
> 
> Sherlock tap-tapped at his keyboard, lips moving around silent sentences, eyes scanning his screen. But he said nothing.
> 
> Words failed her on a routine basis. She had one, maybe two, really great comebacks in her arsenal per week and she’d already used those up in the last hour trying to engage him in conversation. He’d left her hanging, buffeted by the winds sweeping through this cavernous quiet.
> 
> She cleared her throat. Several times. A geriatric cat with a massive hairball.
> 
> No response.
> 
> Her hand flew to the elastic band at the back of her head. Molly slid her palm down the length of her ponytail, flipping the end round and round her fingers. Words bubbled up and out of her, a gooey verbal sludge she'd no control over. "At this rate," she swallowed, "I ought to ask the canteen to stock cat chow for me."
> 
> _Oi. Molly! Shut up!_
> 
> "Cat chow," she repeated, louder this time. "I mean, because of this hairball."
> 
> He said nothing.
> 
> _Infuriating man!_  
> 
> Why had she offered to stay? Oh, what was it now, going on four extra hours? Again?!? Let him sink under piles of evidence on his own. He clearly favored that to actual human company anyway! She had better things to do than stand around watching his brain work.
> 
> _You love watching his brain work, spinning truth from fragments of crime scene fiction._
> 
> She really did. The breadth and scope of his knowledge blew her away, made her want to put evidence tags all over her body, bask in his attention.
> 
> _And listen to him read aloud from white papers... medical school textbooks... grotesque police reports..._
> 
> He treated clinical language with the same reverence as a Shakespearean actor. She'd pay good money to buy out The Globe for one night, stand dead center of the first balcony and listen to him read. She'd even order up a storm to settle overhead. Nothing violent or even wet. Just unpredictable enough so that its electricity crackled behind the clouds and sparked under her skin.
> 
> Either that or she'd hit him over the head with her first-year anatomy textbook.
> 
> _Infuriating man!_
> 
> Molly stomped about her side of the worktop, slamming processing supplies back into their cupboards. Time to reclaim a shred of her evening, her self-respect! He could hang for all she cared.
> 
> Her own fault, really. Greg Lestrade had invited her to join him on D.I. night at The Harp. For goodness sakes! And she'd chosen to nurse this posh arse rather than a cider or two. 
> 
> After several more minutes of her clamourous busy work, he deigned to address her, without looking up from the scanner’s monitor. His preternatural irised shimmered in the cool electric light.
> 
> “Molly."
> 
> It wasn't a question or an invitation.
> 
> Like his full sentences, though, Sherlock's stern, one-word response somehow dripped with whiskey and honey. Every syllable seeped into her, potent and seductive as a hot toddy on a drizzly night.
> 
> She rifled her brain for anything resembling a pithy retort. She was still peeved after all.
> 
> "Em...em...yes?"
> 
> _Oi. Go home Molly. You're braindead._
> 
> He pursed his lips, obviously preferring the bite of his own teeth to answering her. “I just need a quiet place, the last place anyone would think to look for me when I can’t go home to Baker Street. Nothing more than that. I’m not looking to secure rooms at Al Capone’s favorite haunt."
> 
> _Take note, Molly; that's how one does 'pithy'._
> 
> “Oh.” She nodded once, tipsy on the way he managed to string sentences together even when it pained him to do so.
> 
> _…the last place anyone would think to look for me…_  It took her a moment to catch his meaning. They’d worked closely with one another for the better part of a year. Molly was the only member of the lab staff he interacted with (and the only one that didn't scoot out when he breezed in!). They'd discussed all manner of bodily fluids and probed countless lifeless organs together.
> 
> And she ranked no higher than landlady of the last place anyone would think of to look for him, a footnote to his days. Nights. Whatever.
> 
> She inhaled, swallowing her disappointment. “So…em… How dangerous are these _anyones_ of yours then?”
> 
> He didn’t answer.
> 
> And she couldn't stop rushing to fill the void, dumping all her anxiety in the moment rather than carting it around with her for the remainder of the evening. “I just mean, well, should I worry? For you. Em…Not that I worry, of course. For you. You probably have loads of people worrying—“
> 
> _“Molly.”_ He fired her name across the worktop again, a warning. And yet, she continued, hoping to extract more words from his lips. These few minutes constituted the most he’d spoken to her in the last three hours.
> 
> “Well, I just meant what do you like? So I can keep my cupboards stocked?”
> 
> “Nothing.”
> 
> It wasn't difficult to imagine him sitting in his flat with a stack of cold case files in his lap, an IV pumping vitamins and minerals into his veins. Tasty chemistry experiments administered to alleviate the boredom inherent to sitting down and eating solid food fit his demeanor. No Sunday roast with friends or family for him; too many dead bodies to consider. She'd never seen him eat anything beyond crisps. And the sugar at the bottom of his coffee cup, if slurping a viscous syrup from one's mug could be considered _eating_. Molly always had crisps on hand. She supposed she could un-retire the chipped sugar bowl from her gran's fancy tea service, leave it out next to the kettle for him...
> 
> “Nothing? Not even for a quick bite?”
> 
> “No. No quick bites."  
> 
> Molly tugged at her ponytail again. How did his voice manage to spin silk from flat monosyllables? At this rate, she’d have better luck freeing a sword from a stone. 
> 
> Well, you don't know how deep the blade's buried until you give it a tug.
> 
> Molly tugged. “Em…what about tea? You take tea…and biscuits? Don’t you?”
> 
> Sherlock's translucent lids fluttered over eyes gone vapor-gray in the ambient glow of the lab's under-cupboard lighting.
> 
> He trained that pale gaze on her, a big cat circling his prey.
> 
> His eyes pinned her in place and not at all against her will.
> 
> Molly floated in the quiet, small hands frozen to the stainless steel worktop, and waited for him to pounce. He didn't. Instead, he spun the long seconds between them, weaving a spell around her. 
> 
> She’d linger there for hours, if necessary, just to hear his voice again.
> 
> “Tea. Yes. I take tea,” he said, a corner of his mouth inching upward.
> 
> The muscles in her stomach fought the pull of his unintentional seduction. Failed.
> 
> He'd meant it unintentionally... right?
> 
> Sherlock's eyes raked over her face then released her, dropping her back to earth. He returned his attention to his work but not without a parting tease. “Don’t go to any trouble. I’m fine with... _whatever_.” His posh drawl twisted tight around each word then sprung free, stringing Molly along and dismissing her in the same breath.

She should’ve taken offense to him thinking she stocked only the bog standard. Yes, she had a giant box of Typhoo in her kitchen and, yes, she brewed a nice strong cuppa every morning. But she went out of her way to share her Yorkshire with him when he showed up at Bart’s. Didn’t he even notice?

“Don’t get bent out of shape, Molly. It’s only tea.” She scolded herself and returned her attention to her _not date_ ministrations.

Regardless of his dismissiveness, she couldn’t help indulging in the idea of herself dressed as his gun moll. Not the naughty fancy dress parody with the lace suspenders and the black silk hold-ups. More the Faye Dunaway kind with the beret and sweaters. God, the woman had glorious cardis; long-sleeved cashmere numbers with silk scarves knotted around her slender neck.

“A dainty suspender belt and seamed stockings might be nice…with the right person,” she whispered, running an index finger along the thin elastic of her very ordinary waistband. The ‘right person’ came immediately to mind, long and lean with a crop of dark cowlicks sprouting from his scalp left to go wild by his undisciplined grooming routine.

Gooseflesh pebbled her skin and her thighs clenched around his waist. His pupils dilated. Those pretty lips parted as her hands splayed over his smooth chest.

She could feel the prickle of dark, downy fuzz under the pad of her finger as she traced the line from his navel to his coarser, thicker hairline. She imagined his breath hitching has her fingers roamed, became more greedy...

Molly flattened her palm on the sensitive skin of her own belly. She let the fantasy bloom behind closed lids; voluptuous jewel tones and resonant sound waves rippling down to the marrow of her bones.

Her hand dipped lower.

“Molly...”

Sherlock's baritone skated over her skin. Strained, intense...

"Molly!"

And real.

“Molly!” he bellowed again from the hallway.

Shit!

Her eyes snapped open in time to catch a blur of coat and hair in the mirror’s reflection. Shit!

Sherlock advanced, closing the distance between her kitchen and the bath. Well, bloody hell! Her nervous system fizzed and popped, unable to rouse itself as he stormed into full view. If she saw see him, he certainly didn't have any trouble taking in her knee socks, naked thighs, and white pants!

His reflection came into focus. For the life of her, she could not move! 

Dear Lord! Knowing him, he'd prop himself up against the doorframe, nice as you please, and carry on some one-sided conversation about a triple homicide, oblivious to her state of undress - and her embarrassment!

“SHIT!” she croaked. jolting her limbs into action. She shoved with both hands, met resistance. The heavy door jumped back at her. Sherlock's long pale fingers wrapped around the edge to keep it from slamming shut on him.

"Molly! What the- ?"

"Shit!" She pushed again, this time with her back braced against it, raised panels cutting into her shoulder blades, in a last-ditch attempt to keep him out.

His hand slipped out of the way just as the door clapped shut, hinges rattling in the jamb. A thunderous response and his body bounced off the wood.

“Shit! Molly!!”

“Jesus Lord!! Sherlock?? Sh- Sherlock! Oh my GOD!!"

"No. Not _quite._ What’d I do to deserve _thaaat?”_ he whined.

"Oh, I don't know. How about _surprised a helpless single woman in her bathroom?"_ With her body still wedged against the door, Molly flexed all her muscles. At that moment she had every faith that her petite frame could stop a bullet train, a six-foot-one-inch intruding Adonis, and everything in between.

Or she'd die trying!

_How the hell did he get into her flat?_

“You scared me half to death!" she huffed. "You deserve…whatever you got and more!”

“I…Issshhhyou…sssserve….”

“What!? I...I can’t understand a word you’re saying." Her tone bordered on harsh.

 _Correction._ Her tone wasn't harsh at all; it had reached maximum shrill, aided by the reverb of her porcelain tiled walls. _Well, what do you expect when a brooding Heathcliff barrels down on you?_ she thought.

_Probably not shrill, Molly._

"Shhhhyou...ssserve-"

"Sherlock. " She kicked the door with her heel in frustration. "What are you saying?"

“Firstly, I said, I take issue with you thinking I deserve a nasal fracture for showing up at the designated address at the agreed-upon time. And secondly,” he groused, "I'm holding my ethmoid bone in place until I can see a _doctor."_

Damn him. Molly couldn’t help the smile that crossed her lips at his last inference - oh, he'd see a _doctor_ all right!

Nor could she stem the glow suffusing her insides at his casual use of 'ethmoid bone'. He drenched medical terminology in a rich timbre that always weakened her knees, even when she was cross with him.

 _He must practice all his smooth retorts before filing them away,_ she thought. She'd bet that the Narcissus in her hallway managed to deploy line after line of sparkling rejoinders and captivate his own reflection while standing at his bathroom mirror, even with his face woolly from sleep and mouth full of sudsy toothpaste.

Molly envied him that flippant grace. "Arsehole," she whispered.

"Well, that was rather rude Molly."

"Oh! Shit! I mean...oh, bollocks."

"First you injure me, then you insult me?"

"Yes. No! I mean... No! I... bloody hell!" She clamped her hands over her mouth. "Shit," she mumbled.

"Molly. Your bedside manner is appalling. No wonder you only work with the dead."

She heard the sly grin in his voice. Always the sly grin. If he didn't have a bruised nose already, she'd give him a fracture in the cab ride to the nearest A and E... which was King's College... fifteen minutes by cab... Friday. They'd have a bit of a wait ahead of them—

His voice rumbled under the door. "Well, since it's unlikely I'll receive any medical treatment here, I should probably hail a taxi to King's College.

She bit her bottom lip but the snort erupted anyway. "OK, this time I mean it. You are a...an..."

 _"Arsehole,_ Molly. I believe the word you're reaching for is _arsehole."_  

"Yes. That's the word. Thank you." Her fright ebbed and annoyance took over. "How'd you get up here anyway?"

"Are we seriously going to hold this conversation separated by your very solid six-panel door?"

“Well, em…” He did have a point, infuriating man. “Can you…would you do me a favor first?”

A long, heavy sigh preceded his response. “I _suppooose._ ”

“You _suppose?_  OK, whatever. I need you to walk back down the hallway, go through the door, down the stairs and out to the steps. Then I need you to wait there until I yell for you.”

No answer.

Knowing him even a little, it seemed unlikely that he'd already moved to obey her order. “Sherlock? Did you hear me?”

“Why?”

“Because I need to… em… well, I need to get into my bedroom.”

“Why?”

“Because. Sherlock!” Why did he find it necessary to counter her simple request with belligerence? Like a six-year-old boy? “I need to…to…em…will you just do as I ask, please?”

He'd stormed into _her_ flat and _she_ was asking him for quarter? Genius! Really, really rich! 

 _Infuriating man._ She’d like to tweak his not-broken nose!

And kiss it, too.

“Molly. Why can’t you just open the door? So I can see you?” he asked, as though doing just that amounted to the most logical course of action between a half-naked pathologist and a graduate chemist with a crime-solving hobby.

It wasn't.

And yet...

Now it was her turn to antagonize  _him._ “Why?”

“Hmmpffff.”

That sigh again. Good. She didn't appreciate being the only one unable to control her emotions in this situation. But that sigh; the husky overtones, its mysterious undertones. The gust of breath seeped through the wood, the wool of her sweater, the thin t-shirt under that. She wanted to strip off her layers and drench herself in that sound.

“Because. Because…” His voice faltered, a bit frazzled around its imperious edges.

Silence.

Sherlock Holmes without a pointed remark at the ready? Will wonders never cease?

“Because I want to make sure you’re ok.” He wavered, then stumbled over his next words. “I…I was worried…”

 _Worried._ About her? She struggled to keep the surprise - and the not-so-secret pleasure - under wraps. Her brain obliged, able only to form a single syllable.

“Why?” she murmured.

His agitation flared. “Oh, I don’t know. How about _the door leading up to your flat was ajar and when I walked into your kitchen things seemed… amiss?”_

“What's amiss in my kitchen?” she shot back. She hated the way her voice pouted around the question but she couldn’t stop herself from affecting his demeanor.

_"Molly."_

The soft appeal brushed against the door. And her heart.

Her name on his lips bristled with… a note of… well, not sentiment, exactly. She couldn't name it, didn't want to define it just yet in case she'd heard incorrectly.

She knew his meager reservoir of patience would not hold if they continued to conduct this conversation from opposite sides of the door. Molly pressed her ear against the wood, straining to hear his breath. She imagined him with his hands braced on either side of the frame, forehand resting against the door.

Heathcliff fantasies wrought in the inky hues of his woven coat and glossy hair.

She scoffed. They were colleagues engaged in a ridiculous standoff in an ordinary flat in the middle of regular old Clapham, not skulking around one another on the moors surrounding Wuthering Heights. Besides, she didn’t fancy putting up with Heathcliff-level aggravation, no matter how pretty Sherlock looked wrapped in his moodiness. 

Molly twisted her fingers around the knob. If she could read Sherlock’s expression, gage the strength of those squalls brewing behind his eyes... Did she rate only a 2 or 3 in the winds of his mind, drifting like a pleasant but forgettable breeze? Or had she ruffled his sails, coursed through him at an 8 or higher, commandeered his attention?

Did she muddle his thoughts the same way he did hers?

If she did, what then?

And if she _didn't_...?

The possibilities of their relationship remained endless while Molly stood in the tiled box of her bathroom. But real-life - and Sherlock - waited beyond the threshold.

She took a deep breath and caught her reflection in the mirror.

 _You'll survive, Molly. Good looking though he may be, Sherlock Holmes is just a boy,_ she reminded herself and opened the door.

*** * * * ***

**A blessedly cool Friday night, September - 2010**

Molly seemed hell-bent on maiming him tonight.

_Infuriating woman._

Sherlock pressed his head against the door and braced his hands on the frame. He couldn't shake feeling untethered, in a state of near panic over Molly's safety and playing a guessing game with himself, no longer able to take an accurate measure of her wellbeing. The alarming false narratives came at him too quickly and in vicious colors: a madman with a knife to her throat, a serial killer waiting quietly for her to turn out the light and go to bed.

He caught himself. Evaluating the situation through a dizzying filter of emotion rather than the sharp lens of cool, hard reason that he held so dear wouldn't serve. 

_Caring is not an advantage, brother mine._

Mycroft taunted from the corner office he’d set up in Sherlock’s mind palace.

Big brother was right, however. And annoying.

Sherlock came to associate both those traits with Molly seconds after their first meeting in Bart’s mortuary, 

> Her head bent over the victim's open cavity in concentration, face obscured and magnified by the safety goggles wrapped around her fine bones. He noticed the severe part of her mahogany hair. And her humming. The woman was elbows deep in blackened human anatomy and she was humming to herself.
> 
> _All the evils of the world_ and Euterpe sings her songs of death, love, and war in the bowels of St. Barts.
> 
> An unexpected place to find a Muse.
> 
> "…heavy metal poisoning. Obvious," he barked, hurting his own ears.
> 
> She blinked up at him, eyes backlit by autumn's embers. A prism of bioluminescent greens and soft golds like old tarnished coins, ringed with bushy little mahogany lashes.
> 
> Upturned nose. Lips that curved down when she opened her mouth to speak.
> 
> "Em, yes, well... no. Not exactly, Mr... Mr...I'm sorry…who are you?”
> 
> Her tone didn’t hold an ounce of the hostility he’d come to expect irritation or downright aggression from the ordinary people he was forced to interact with when work had him venturing beyond the solitary pleasantness of his own kitchen. He loved field work, true enough. The prospect something outrageous for his brain to tinker with along the banks of the Thames or in the cinders of a deserted industrial park got him out of bed every morning. In most cases, kept him from returning there, too.
> 
> Bloated corpses. Heads with no bodies. Bodies with no heads. Absolute heaven!
> 
> He could do without the living, however, and their clanging, inconsequential noise.
> 
> Molly’s voice shimmered even as she tripped over her words. Her timbre vibrated under his skin.
> 
> Sherlock inhaled, held the breath and rifled through his mental card catalogue, searching for a heavy book. One he could drop on this alarming sensation. Squash it.
> 
> He had no desire to consider her, not her fine bones, not her humming. not her glittering eyes.
> 
> His search proved unsuccessful.
> 
> Alarming.
> 
> Even more troublesome was the fact that his body moved closer to her without receiving orders from his brain. He came round the autopsy table to her side, saw the flush creeping up her neck. The heat rising off of her body smelled clean. Castile soap and fresh citrus. Woody plants, too. Bergamot. Rosemary. Enveloped in formaldehyde.
> 
> He’d gotten too close to her.
> 
> _Not nearly close enough,_ his body replied.
> 
> She was so very small...
> 
> "The name's Sherlock Holmes. Miss...?"
> 
> His voice slammed against the room’s lino and stainless steel, weighty and metallic. He sounded like such a posh arse, which he was, all things considered.
> 
> "Em...Miss Hooper. Molly...em... Molly Hooper."
> 
> She sounded delicate, trilling like a sparrow.
> 
> _Do not consider her further._
> 
> Molly straightened, challenging him to abandon his conscious, consider her further.
> 
> He couldn’t stop combing the planes and ridges of her face, committing her flaws to memory, the way her irregular features didn't conform to commercial ideals of beauty, images bombarding the masses from bus shelters, the front page of The Daily Mail, those transformation shows Mrs. Hudson droned on and on about.
> 
> She cleared her throat. "Hereditary hemochromatosis."
> 
> Her voice jammed his circuitry.
> 
> As did her accurate diagnosis.

Molly put him on the back foot from the first. A year later, he still hadn’t mounted a winning offense, hence his current situation.

_Infuriating woman._

He’d rather be home, closing cases left unsolved by the Bow Street Runners, wrapped in the thick of another monastic evening instead of here.

That wasn’t entirely true.

Try as he might to cover the four miles between Baker Street and her flat at a lazy saunter, his legs sped over the pavement in furious running chromatic semiquavers.  _Flight of the Bumblebee_ toying with his nervous system whenever he forced himself to slow down.

He struggled to tamp down his worry at finding her front door open and her trousers in a heap on the kitchen floor. His brain went ice cold when he’d retrieved her clothing, fingers clenching the fabric, chest burning. He whirled round and started down the hallway, intent on finding her. Alive.

In that moment, anxiety, not examination, took priority.

Alarming.

More alarming than that? His inability to detach himself from Molly’s subversive influence even when separated from her by solid wood.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, including her own admission, he remained unconvinced of her physical state, so much so that he fairly begged her to open the bathroom door and show herself.

Mycroft directed him from a high pulpit in the chambers of his mind palace. _You have control of your disappointingly limited faculties, Sherlock. Don’t lose it over a woman. Make your deductions based on facts only. Primary school tactics, surely._

A muffled click shook him free of Mycroft’s grip. But his reflexes failed to engage in time. Molly yanked the door open and his forehead bounced off the raised panel.

“Eeesh!” she squeaked. shoving the door closed again. His face slammed into the wood on the rebound. Again.

“Owwww! Molly! For god sakes!” He pinched the bridge of his nose, more so from shock than pain.

_Infuriating woman._

“I’m adding whiplash to the mounting damages, Molly.” He hated the ill-humour in his tone, disliked that she rankled him. Judging by the peel of laughter erupting from the other side of the door, she found the situation, and him, quite comical.

She cracked the door open, looking at him from under a veil of disheveled hair. He had a glimpse of little more than an eye, really, and the corner of her mouth, wedged between the door frame and the slab of wood - her weapon of choice. That was enough to quell some of his fears. And make his fingers twitch. He’d never seen her with her hair loose. He bit the inside of his cheek, shifting his focus to the taste of his own blood rather than…

“I’ll assess you for a concussion if you’d please do as I ask and step outside so I can put on some…well…my trousers.”

The image of her standing inches from him in nothing but pants and a jumper shouldn’t have come to him as quickly as it did. Ivory thighs, ruddy knees… Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, flattening the hand at his nose across his eyes. He held her trousers out in front of him and motioned toward her.

“Oh,” she whispered.

“Yes. _Oh,_ ” he said, more benign teasing than disdain.

“I guess I can sort of understand why you’d think things amiss, then,” she said, her voice sheepish. “In my defense though, you ambushed me. Christ, Sherlock. I live alone! I’m not used to men flying down the hallway. A broken nose seems a fair exchange.”

As the hallway in question appeared to be the direct route by which one entered her bedroom, he rather liked knowing that men _flying down her hallway_ wasn't a normal occurrence.

No! He didn't! He didn't care.

The door hinges groaned. Sherlock stifled a similar sound from his own lips. He knew better than to open his eyes. Still, the temptation plucked at his lids.

Their fingers touched, briefly. He felt each whorl of her work-roughed pads, all the little nicks and almost healed cuts. Her data came at him like results posting to the lab’s main monitor, the word 'preliminary' preceding each report.

He breathed through the sensation, the slow ebb and flow of her scent, heat, skin over him. If only he’d taken off his coat. He could’ve collected more of her information, processed her at an accelerated speed. She'd forced him to suffer through partial details, making him wait for more of her to unfold rather than allowing him to extract the minutia at his own frenzied pace.

She forced him to _consider_ her rather than deduce her.

A gentle tug, then the fabric and her hand were gone. The door shut and Sherlock opened his eyes, exhaling a remnant of a breath he didn’t know he held. “So I’ll just…em…I’ll just wait in the lounge then…for you to…whatever.”

_Oh, do shut up you imbecile._

He clasped cold hands behind his back and retreated down the hallway, gauging his odds at the door cracking open again.

“OK. I’ll just be a minute,” she shouted. “There’s some wine in the kitchen if you’d like a glass. I can make tea, if you’d rather. Or there’s beer in the refrigerator. There’s biscuits…” Her voice trailed off.

His chances at catching more of her in fewer clothes rated less than slim.

Sherlock stormed off to the kitchen, rubbing the numbness at his temples. He could use a cigarette, three nicotine patches at the very least, to reorganize his thought process, remember his intentions tonight.

He wandered around her flat, focusing on her ordinariness: framed festival posters lining one wall of her lounge (she had a fondness for the ones in Edinburgh and Galway; they received two prime wall slots each); concert tickets and wristbands tucked around her light switches (Molly liked uni folk, jazz, that rock band from Ireland); a put-it-together shelving unit from the Swedish place (which remained un-put-together).

Sherlock felt more like himself, gathering everything he needed to know about Molly Hooper in two-minutes’ time. Easy. Satisfying.

Not a Muse at all.

Case closed.

Except for how'd she'd gotten that large crescent-shaped scar he'd felt on her ring fingertip. Why didn't she ever wear her hair down on days when paperwork had her camped out in the pathology office rather than in the lab or mortuary?

What did her skin smell like fresh from a steaming hot bath?

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut until the electric blue flashes of light seared his vision, blotting out any more thoughts of her hair and skin.

_Better._

He paced her kitchen, inspecting the cooking gadgetry. Familiar items reminded him of his childhood. A French butter crock tucked into the corner. A stoneware pitcher overflowing with wooden spoons. A sturdy, well-made food chopper, of the kind used by people who make a habit of cooking rather than collecting status pieces, took up prime real estate near the hob.

A stack of stained but laundered white sack towels.

He ran his hand over the top cloth.

Mummy’s playful chiding glowed at the edges of his aural axis. He hadn’t heard that bright, carefree sound in… She'd suffered manic bouts of anxiety for as long as he could remember, always worrying about something - him most often. Mycroft had grown quickly out of the ‘little man’ moniker she’d attached to him. To this day, however, he remained ‘Mummy’s sweet boy’.

He looked out a window of wavy, mullioned glass. Mummy pulling the fresh towels from the line. Father holding the wicker basket for her. She dodged his kisses, darting around the hanging laundry until he caught her behind a bed sheet.

Five-year-old Sherlock lost them to the glare bouncing off the blazing white cotton. He returned to the pock-marked slab kitchen table. His feet dangled just above the floor, not quite touching yet. He wasn't big, not like Mycroft. _Someday though_ , his father assured him.

He slathered his toast with butter and honey, tasted messy, warm, birdsong, sunshine.

The smell of gas radiated from the old enamel cooker, tickled the back of his throat.

A flash of pigtails. The scrunched up face of a little girl he didn’t recognize. She seemed so familiar...

She stuck her tongue out at him.

The gleam of a match striking. Orange light reflected in her lonely, black eyes.

Mycroft running into the room, tripping over his feet. He extinguished the flame with his large, bare hands.

His parents shouting…

Sherlock shook his head to rid it of the static. His synapses misfired on occasion, picking up fragmented deductions and crossing them with his own memories. To be expected, really, when one recorded as much data as he had in the last half hour. Half a lifetime.

These experimental mind-movies - beginning mid-scene, ending without resolution - ignited quickly, like an old magnesium filament flashbulb. The glass shattered, leaving nothing behind but a weak tail of smoke. And ghosts.

He preferred the phantasmagoric imagery that accompanied heavy narcotics usage. At least he knew from whence those came: _cleverly concocted chemical compounds._

The ones that played out as a result of sobriety couldn't be trusted.

He inspected the market carnage on her worktop: a whole chicken, several salads, cheeses, crisps. Clearly, Molly had big plans, the ones involving guests and games of charades or whatever people played on their weekends. Old uni pals over for a night of raucous babble. Not exactly his milieu. He didn’t have much (any) experience with impromptu get-togethers (or uni pals) to be going on, however. The prospect didn’t appeal anyway, he huffed.

John’s company made a comfortable addition to his life, an unassuming ambiance to counter Mrs. Hudson’s mothering (which he liked more than he cared to admit - especially to her).

He paced the small room, at a loss for what to do with himself since the possibility of finding a serial killer hiding under her bed hadn’t panned out. He drifted back into her lounge, drawn to the hodgepodge of framed pictures on the mantle of her non-working fireplace. Photos were an obvious choice for deductive work. Most people stopped at the images themselves, never listening to the details shouting at them from the choice of frame material, the groupings, etcetera.

The first one he examined showed Molly as a young girl. Pigtails instead of a ponytail. A toothy grin. She smiled back at him from in front of Christmas tree surrounded by people who shared similar bone structure. The forced casualness of a family holiday portrait. She beamed into the camera, oblivious to the ludicrous placement of each member’s hands on the other’s shoulders and the plaid taffeta skirt threatening to swallow her whole.

Next to that one, an older Molly wearing a slim black leotard, pointy black ears perched atop her head. False eyelashes. Whiskers painted on her cheek. Her nose tipped with pink glitter. She raised a pint and winked from inside a jet black frame, the words ‘Caru Caerdydd’ stamped in red block letters along its bottom edge.

 _Love Cardiff_. A fancy dress party. First or second year at uni.

Another photo in a silver frame, tucked behind those she clearly held more dear, caught his eye. He lifted it away from the rest for closer examination. This was taken within the last two years, judging by her physical signifiers. Molly stood, legs crossed, lead foot pointing forward, one hand on her hip. She wore a semi-sheer dress, covered in a riotous botanical of coral, black, and seafoam green. Vintage. Post-war giddiness in an optimistic fabric.

Like Young Molly’s taffeta dress, her petite frame was almost lost to the swirl of fabric had it not been for the very adult expanses of creamy skin on display. Modest by today's standards but alluring nonetheless. Maybe more so because of its lack of overt showmanship.

The word beautiful rippled through his brain. A woeful adjective given his love of words but he couldn't land on a more suitable descriptor. 

Probably for the best

Other words (and feelings) coursed through his body. Also ill-suited.

But very, very enjoyable.

He should put the picture back, walk out the door, go down the stairs, wait for her as she'd asked. Suck up lungfuls of cold air for good measure.

Sherlock's thumb glided over her clavicle. It shown like bone china in the flattering light, set off by the broad scoop of her round neckline. Faint freckles dusted her otherwise naked arms, just below the little cap sleeves.

He’d never seen her arms bare above the wrists before.

The soft, fitted bodice skimmed her frame and nipped at her waist before billowing into a swing skirt that stopped just shy of her knees. Coral heels enhanced the graceful curve of her calves, the slender bones of her ankles, and high arch of her feet.

Her hair tumbled around her face, a mass of curls just moments from breaking free of the enameled birds tucked here and there about her skull.

Molly’s cheek pressed to the shoulder of a man with ginger hair similar in age. Six feet tall. Broad shouldered. Flat nose. Played rugby at uni given the remnants of several nose fractures.

Sherlock disliked him.

The tuxedo was a formal hire, not his own. The first one he’d tried on judging by the boxy cut of it. He’d nicked himself shaving that morning, indicating that he’d been in a rush. The faint dark circles under his eyes supported a rowdy, late night the evening prior. Stag party.

Molly put a wisp of physical distance between them, hardly noticeable, especially if one’s head was swayed by the deceptive placement of her palm flat against his chest, stiff and just shy of his heart. Ginger man’s arm clamped around her waist, desperate to keep her close.

“Too late for you, _mate_ ,” Sherlock smirked, firing the last hard consonant at Molly's date.

Her eyes stared back at the lens, dark and determined. She’d already made up her mind. Now she just went through the pantomime of 'happy coupling' for the sake of a farewell tour.

Her most recent boyfriend. No longer in the picture, as it were. But not completely exorcised from her mind.

Sherlock’s ears rang with the sound of phantom laughter tinkling at someone’s joke.

Her laughter.

The rugby player’s joke.

He had a strong desire to throw the frame across the room, watch it smash against the wall. Sour waves lapped at his insides. A common enough side-effect to living off nothing but tea and two biscuits over the last thirteen hours, he supposed. He just needed air.

Mrs. Hudson had read him the riot act that morning when she'd come upstairs only to discover he'd let her heaping full breakfast go cold and untouched. John devoured his and, naturally, received the lion’s share of their landlady’s admiration.

Annoying.

Everything conspired to annoy him right now.

Every single thing.

What was taking Molly so long?

He shrugged off his Belstaff, transferring the frame from one hand to the other, and tossed his coat over the swirling woodwork of a thrifted velvet chair that faced her front windows. The draft trickling under her sills wasn't enough. He needed frigid temperatures. Or a speedball.

And food. He needed food, too. But not here. He’d look like a puppy just released from the pound if stayed in her flat any longer than his work required, begging for her food and her companionship.

He’d make short work of his visit, stop for chips at that dodgy shop at the corner of the Clapham high street then make his way home. With any luck, he’d stumble upon a B & E or sinister looking lorry before he reached Baker Street, spend the next couple of hours awash in blissful trouble.

Sherlock cast a last sidelong glance at Molly and her rugby-playing comedian, intent on silencing the echo of her giggles.

He couldn’t care less about her failed romances.

“Nope.” he snapped, returning the contrived couple to their place. The only thing that mattered to him was the work. Not her history. Not her school chums.

_Not her old boyfriends._

”Not. At. All." He hissed, each word an individual hammer to the head but the words failed to sink in.

Multiple inanimate Mollys watched him from the ledge, a dozen hazel eyes deducing him. Sherlock wasn’t the only member of this assemblage who didn’t believe his conviction.

Not at all.

*** * * * ***

Molly hugged her knees to her chest, doubling the blanket over and bunching it under her feet to keep the cool night at bay. The temperature had taken another dip but the chilly air was just what this doctor ordered.

The evening hadn’t gone exactly as she’d had planned.

Not. At. All. She mouthed the words around the lip of her wine glass before taking a sip. The dried cherry-heavy red seeped into her bones and pinked her cheeks.

Cold comfort.

In her carefully choreographed version of the evening, she and Sherlock relaxed beneath a pearly moon, swapping case stories between bites of mesclun salad loaded with goat cheese and maple-glazed pecans, oblivious to the hour. Content to chat all night long.

Her reality lurched toward midnight under a sooty London sky, accompanied by a giant bag of crisps.

Alone.

After pulling her hair back into an uninspired ponytail, Molly resigned herself to the fact that a wardrobe change was not in the cards tonight. No problem! She bucked up, secretly thrilled at being forced to sacrifice trendy for comfortable and emerged from the bathroom, ready to squeeze lemonade from her _not-date_ lemons.

Sherlock stood at her mantle, his back to her. She rarely got the chance to appreciate this view in the lab or morgue and took full advantage, skimming her eyes over his unruly sable curls, noting where they stopped, just shy of his brilliant white collar; his immaculate dark suit jacket draped over square shoulders, the fabric cut sharp enough to accentuate his slim torso without drawing undue attention to it. Unless you happened to find his physique stunning.

Molly did.

She tried to keep her eyes from drifting below his waist. Failed.

Backside. Bum. The innocent words shivered obscenely over her body.

Suffice to say, he was beautifully constructed from tip to toe.

All of him.

He grumbled something as though speaking directly to her collection of pictures. Molly plastered an innocent smile to her face and cleared her throat.

“So, are you set for me to administer concussion protocol?” she snorted, all attempts to affect nonchalance careening off the plaster walls.

Sherlock spun round so violently at the sound, several of her picture frames rattled. She gave small thanks that they didn't topple like dominoes. The last thing she needed was for him to help pick them up, make fun of the rather chaste ‘naughty kitty’ she'd worn to a fancy dress party her second year at Cardiff.

If he noticed at all.

Or reading the details of her dying relationship in the last portrait of she and Matthew at a friend’s wedding.

If he noticed at all.

He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and didn’t speak for a long moment. Molly blanketed the silence with more noise. “So…em, you seem to be in one piece. Your body looks fine. No! Well. I mean your body looks well. Not your body! Em…your nose. Your _nose_ looks fine. I mean well!”

_Oh dear, Molly._

“You didn’t draw blood,” he deadpanned.

“Oh, that’s a relief!” she laughed. And laughed. Unable to stop the nervous energy from spilling out of her mouth.

Sherlock arched a brow, “I did see stars, however.” His tone strained, an overwhelming desire to be anywhere but here with her no doubt.

“Em…ok.” Molly’s face blazed under a too bright smile. “Em. Would you like something to drink?” She darted out of the lounge, seeking refuge in menial hostess duties. “There’s wine. I can make tea, if you’d rather. I have beer—“

“—And biscuits, too, if my concussed brain can accurately recall the details of the last twenty minutes,” he said, following her into the kitchen and standing opposite the worktop.

“Ah, yep…Yes. I have biscuits, too,” she chuckled, pulling down two wine glasses from an upper cupboard.

“And a rotisserie chicken and salads and cheese, it would appear.” He nodded, eyeing the large assortment of food scattered in front of him.

“Em, yes. Well, you know. Guests. Wine. Food. More wine.” She set the glasses in front of them and stood there, unable to fathom what she needed to do next. "I usually do all the cooking but..." He train of thought derailed, skidding into an awkward silence.

_Get a grip, Molly._

His jaw muscles clenched briefly and she worried what she’d said something wrong. Or done something to affront his posh upbringing.

Idiot Molly! Maybe he _is_ vegan after all! You should’ve asked him days ago!

Dead poultry and assorted cheeses made with animal rennet probably gave him a sour stomach! She rushed to apologize for the spread. “Yes…em… I always go a little overboard when company’s expected. I have plain old crisps too if that’s —“

“No, no. Don’t go to any trouble. I don’t want to disrupt any soirées you have planned for the weekend.”

Molly shot him a quizzical look. “Well, em, I don’t have any plans this weekend,” she shrugged. “Not really.” She worked the cork out of the bottle and filled their glasses, hoping a little alcohol would soften the edges of what had so far been a calamitous evening.

“Oh. Well. I do.” Sherlock picked up his wine and held it to the light. “Loads, actually.” He swirled his glass but didn’t drink. “Loads,” he repeated. “So, I’ll get to it then, not burden either of us longer than necessary.”

Molly’s heart sank. He couldn’t wait to be free of her. Considering she’d bludgeoned him, then made him sick with her carnivorous buffet, she didn’t blame him all that much.

The evening had turned into a Titanic-level disaster.

_He’s just a boy. There are others. Loads._

Her self-talk sounded hollow but Molly was a firm believer in ‘fake it till you make it’ so her brain kept right on faking it. Besides, it wouldn’t kill her to have another friend in the city - one that liked autopsy reports and cellular microbiology as much as she did. Most of her longtime friends had moved north or escaped to the suburbs, kids and pets in tow. She had a handful of colleagues she could call acquaintances. And Greg. She wouldn't call him a friend quite yet, but they were friendly and he'd invited her on a group outing - _that y missed hanging about Sherlock Holmes,_ she reminded herself.

“I’m sorry?? Em…what??” Repetition was unnecessary, however. Each one of his words tickled parts of her body she’d not admit to in polite company.

Sherlock looked down his imperial nose at her, blue eyes _requesting_ her attention rather than demanding it. “I said, I’d like to start in the bedroom if you don’t mind.”

Yep, she’d heard him correctly.

And felt him correctly, too.

Molly may not have required him to repeat himself, but she certainly enjoyed the way his dusky-coloured voice wrapped round the words the second time they’d fallen from his mouth.

“It’s part of my general bolthole surveillance,” he added.

“Oh.”

Sherlock headed for her bedroom without waiting for authorization, as if he knew the way. Not that finding it took any great deductive powers. She had four rooms - one of which was the bath - and an alcove. Her little slice of London flowed along one long hallway and dumped onto her tiny balcony. Hardly as impressive as his Marylebone address to be sure. She imagined him surrounded by fine wood and impressive fixtures. Everything arranged just so.

“After that, I’ll make my way around the other rooms,” he called back to her. “Just taking note of flaws in the physical structure, assessing viability. You won't be in my way. Feel free to go about whatever you’d planned on doing this evening. I’m sure you get quite enough of playing my governess at Bart’s…”

His voice trailed off, leaving Molly alone in her kitchen with questions she couldn’t form and wine she probably shouldn’t drink.

Two and a quarter hours later, Molly sat on her balcony curled under her blanket enjoying her crisps and glass of wine.

 _Enjoying_ was a bit off the mark, considering the chilly weather and all those best-laid plans that had gone astray.

She heard him humming from inside but beyond the soft currents of music, Sherlock hadn’t checked in with her since dismissing himself and parading into her bedroom. Her unintended solitude, set to his gentle buzzing, was rather pleasant. The breeze cleared her mind; the wine wrapped her in its balmy embrace. The combination diffused any remnants of self-pity she'd considered nursing.

Taken at face value, the evening had something of an Ernst Lubitsch 'comedy of errors' flair to it - minus the snappy dialogue and glamorous settings.

She raised her glass. “Ninotchka Makes Lemonade From Lemons,” she announced and toasted the moon.

“I’ll pass on the lemonade. If I can get a glass of wine, though?”

Sherlock’s baritone crept up behind her, cutting through the nighttime quiet, coursing through her like an electrical shock. Her knees slammed into the table, knocking the bottle off balance. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine how he’d reacted so quickly, righting the bottle in his exquisite fingers without losing a single drop.

He was made for Lubitsch’s debonair aristocrats.

Her demeanor was more suited for _I Love Lucy._

“Shit,” she frowned, holding her glass in one hand, dabbing at the spill on her chest with a crumpled tissue from her trouser pocket with the other.

“Here,” he said, gently prying the glass out of her hand. “Let me help.” His fingers wrapped around hers, nanoseconds of warmth that pulled her into infinity and then disappeared. He topped off the glass and set it down next to her before exiting. Seconds later, he returned wearing his coat and wringing out a damp handkerchief. “This will work better.”

The pristine white cloth was too fine to stain with moderately priced grape juice. She waved off his assistance. “Oh, I can’t use your handkerchief! I’ll be fine with the tissue…”

The fibers pilled into a pinkish mess the more liquid they soaked up.

“Molly” His tone broached no argument.

She mouthed a sheepish thank you. “I supposed I should show you where things are," she ventured, taking the handkerchief from him and fighting her embarrassment at having to accept his kindness. “Like where the toothpaste lives and where the linens are kept…you know, for sss-sleeping. On the sofa. After you’ve…washed up.”

_Oi. Molly._

Sherlock watched her come close to rubbing a hole right through the thick weave of her sweater. For the first time since they'd met, she wished something else pulled his attention from her. His eyes never wavered. “Next to the basin and In the linen cupboard, respectively, I imagine,” he responded and, for a brief moment, the hard angles of his face relaxed into a genuine smile.

“Well, yes. Em...em, you're welcome to sss-sleep in my bed. When I'm not at home, of course. If I'm here—“

He saved her from further embarrassment. “I won't ever be here when you're home. I shan't inconvenience you in that regard,” he quipped, turning the collar of his Belstaff up and sitting down next to her.

“Oh. OK...I'm...I'm glad to know...that you… _shan’t.”_

 _Do shut up Molly, before you dig yourself a hole so deep they won’t find you for years_.

Sherlock sensed her discomfort. Or maybe he'd just gotten bored of the conversation. Either way, they passed the next few minutes in companionable silence each sipping on their wine and looking out into the darkness.

“My brother doesn’t care for Sangiovese," he said after a while. "But I find the dried cherry appealing." His eyes darted over the trees, focusing on all the hidden things going bump in the night somewhere south of the city. 

Molly turned toward him, watching his neck muscles move as he drained his glass. “Your brother?”

“Mycroft,” he said, and proceeded to pour himself another glass. “You?” he asked, motioning with the bottle.

“Oh. Yes, please.” She held out her glass. “I should’ve known,” she laughed and shook her head. "I met him once but I never put two and two together.”

She expected Sherlock to interrupt, point out how observing the connection between brothers by bone structure or vocal queues was a primary school deduction. But he didn’t. He seemed content to let her continue.

“They summoned me to the executive offices. The governance board. Before you came. He - your brother - he sat behind the CEO’s desk like it belonged to him. Asked me a rapid-fire round of questions." She took a quick sip, remembering standing in front of him with nothing to protect her from his dark shadow. His specter stretched out over the desk but stopped just short of reaching for her. "Felt like I was on a quiz show," she shuddered. "He barely looked up from his paperwork.”

Sherlock grunted.

Molly couldn’t decide if he meant to direct the noise at his brother… or her. Something in the way his face had softened since sitting down, though, gave the impression that Mycroft was his intended target.

“Anyway,” she continued, “he didn’t properly introduce himself.”

“Hmmpff. No. He wouldn’t”

“By the time I had a moment to get a word in edgewise, he dismissed me,” she pouted. In the moment she couldn’t wait to be free of Mycroft’s frosty Bond Street demeanor. In hindsight, she was incredulous.

“Ah, that’s Mycroft.” Sherlock toasted the sky and took a deep gulp of wine.

The night settled around them again, pleasant and easy, the clack of the Overground pulling into Wadsworth Road station an odd but fitting soundtrack. _You'll hate living so close to the tracks, Molly,_ a friend warned. _The sound 'll drive you batty,_ a work colleague offered. She loved it though. From the first night she'd slept at Larkhall Rise, the patient, monotonous vibrato of wheels on wood and steel reminded her of a heart beating. Or blood whooshing through the body, a steady flow to and from the city.

Her ex couldn't stand it. Always begged her to sleep over at his.

"Some people find living so near the tracks annoying." Sherlock sounded reverent, almost tender. "I can feel the lines running under Baker Street. The city's vasculature... I love it," he breathed, his voice drifting off, carried by some invisible carriage along the line.

For the first time that evening Molly let herself drift in the quiet, no longer feeling muddled or disappointed. Sherlock shifted in his chair, crossing his long legs at the ankles and closing his eyes.

She lounged in a stained sweater and wrinkly denim. His wool trousers didn't show even a crease.

"I'd speak to Mycroft on your behalf but I sense that you can handle yourself."

“I have an older sibling too,” she said softly, compassion and solidarity in her tone. “The 'first' tends to taint everything the second does. Steals our spotlight. I know what it's like."

He turned to her. “I don’t think anyone knows.” His eyes shone like black pools, deep but not dangerous; waters that invited night swimming, clothes left on shore. “Mycroft pulled the same intimidation tactics with John,” he said, still staring into her.

“John?”

“New flatmate. You met him in the lab.”

“Oh. Oh! Mike Stamford’s friend.” She had a brief recollection of John. Sandy hair, wide face. Affable. Like Greg Lestrade - only shorter. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? John, I mean?”

“And a _soldier_ , as he’s quick to remind me.” Sherlock’s peevishness was less than convincing.

“Well. Those credentials seemed to have passed muster with Mycroft.”

“As did yours, Molly Hooper.” He smiled quickly and turned away, concentrating on the liquid in his glass.

A fuzzy, wine-induced fog distorted the words before they reached her ears - or after. They sounded as close to a flirt as one was likely to get from Sherlock Holmes. “Why does he think you need so much looking after?” she blurted. “Your brother. I don’t mean… not like you can’t take care of yourself or anything…”

“Molly.” The flirt was gone, replaced by something opaque. He didn’t fire directly at her but her name was a warning nonetheless. _Don't touch_ , it said. But, unlike the barbed wire tone he deployed in the lab, tonight he wrapped her syllables in thin layers of tissue paper. Millions of layers. But a paper substratum, no matter how thick, would still dissolve under the gentle pressure of a blade.

She couldn’t help making an incision. “I just meant…why does he think you need so much looking after?”

He flashed gray storms her way, winds whipping around his pupils. There'd be no cutting through his layers tonight. Maybe not ever.

“I can get into a lot of trouble." He offered nothing more.

“Oh. I see…” She turned toward the sound of the Overground again and pulled at her ponytail. How much trouble could one man get into? She couldn't imagine him as a beautiful little boy stirring up anything more dangerous than beehives in summer and bonfires in the fall. Or see him as the uni boy, gangly limbs and tousled hair, waging no more than good-natured war on other members at The Pitt or whichever club he belonged. 

“Molly. Look at me.” Barbed wire, rigid and sharp.

God help her, that tone should’ve been her cue to reconsider this whole bolthole thing, tell him that the arrangement wasn’t going to work and wish him goodnight and good luck. He sailed too violently between calm seas and gale force winds. She had a rowboat, not the kind of impressive ship needed to navigate him. 

Molly looked at him and rushed headlong into his storm. 

"I see," she repeated. Because she did. Something behind the bluster. Buried in his clouds.

“You _don’t_ see, Molly.” He swallowed, forcing additional words back down the way they'd come.

She wanted to steal understanding from his plush lips, breathe him in and coax some of the trouble into her own mouth. Barring that, she’d give him the silver key with the fluorescent pink ring she’d had made.

His troubles couldn’t be that bad. And if they were, Sherlock Holmes could probably use another friend in London, too.

“OK. Well, I don’t see. But, whatever it is, we’ll help you get through it.”

“We?”

“Yeah. John and I.” She knew next to nothing about his flatmate but Molly needed all the troops she could rally. So did Sherlock it seemed.

His eyes swept over her face. “Why?” he asked. Curious rather than suspicious.

“That’s what friends do,” she shrugged and stood up. “C'mon. I'll get you that key."

Molly Hooper smiled and offered him her hand.

Sherlock Holmes smiled back and took it. 

****FIN...for now. [Next tune queues up soon!]****

### Liner Notes

Ella Fitzgerald’s interpretations of the Cole Porter songbook reign supreme. But there’s an overt provocation in Sinéad’s delivery that aligns with the onset of this bolthole arrangement. Ella's version is plaintive; her voice wraps around the verses and chorus like a silky caress (damn, that lady’s good!). Sinéad though, she’s almost combative in her last refrain. When the song swells, I envision her with fists clenched, ready to do battle with this overwhelming feeling (as she is/was in most of her songs). Then the feeling ebbs and she's resigned to her fate. _God help me, I’m about to get pulled under! Whatever you do, don’t try to save me. I’m already lost._

It’s all fun and games until someone drowns.

As for William Sherlock Scott Holmes, this song (in the guise of one petite pathologist) thrums in his arteries and veins like a steady, subversive bass. The words ring with a challenge as Sinéad sings them. He's always so oblivious and hyper-aware at the same time. And he is the princely embodiment of denial. Sherlock can't help intimidating his own emotions with the relentless charge of a fourth-year bully (or seven-years-older brother). He's teasing himself with Molly's presence. _See? I can dangle this carrot at the edge of my stick all day long; I’ll never, ever succumb to the urge, I'll never take a bite. Ever._

Poor poppet. A+ for effort though, WSSH.


End file.
